Rex Stout - Plot It Yourself

Saul’s eyes were again on Alice Porter. “That was all in the house,” he said. “But she had gone to New York with Mr. Goodwin in his car, so her car was there, and I searched it. Under the front seat, wrapped in newspaper, I found a knife, a kitchen knife with a black handle. Its blade is seven inches long and an inch wide. I have delivered it to Mr. Wolfe. If he has examined it with—”

He sprang forward. Alice Porter had bounced out of her chair and dived for Amy Wynn, her arms stretched and her fingers curved to claws. I was right there, so I had her right arm half a second before Saul got her left one, but she had moved so fast that the fingernails of her left hand got to Amy Wynn’s face before we jerked her back. Philip Harvey, on Amy Wynn’s right, had lunged forward to intervene, and Reuben Imhof, back of Amy Wynn, was on his feet, bending over her. Alice Porter was trying to wriggle loose, but Saul and I had her back against Wolfe’s desk, and she gave it up and started yapping. She glared at Amy Wynn and yapped, “You dirty sneak, you double-crosser, you dirty sneak, you double—”

“Turn her around,” Wolfe snapped. Saul and I obeyed, He eyed her. “Are you demented?” he demanded.

No answer. She was panting. “Why assault Miss Wynn?” he demanded, “She didn’t corner you. I did.”

She spoke. “I’m not cornered. Tell them to let go of me.”

“Will you control yourself?”

“Yes.”

Saul and I let go but stayed between her and Amy Wynn, and Harvey and Imhof were there too. She moved, back to her chair, and sat. She looked at Wolfe. “I don’t know if you’re in it with her,” she said, “but if you are you’ll regret it. She’s a liar and a murderer and now she thinks she can frame me for it, but she can’t. Neither can you, That’s all lies about my seeing those people. I never saw any of them. And if that story was found in my house and that knife was found in my car she put them there. Or you did.”

“Are you saying that Amy Wynn killed Simon Jacobs and Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert?”

“I am. I wish to God I had never seen her. She’s a liar and a sneak and a double-crosser and a murderer, and I can prove it.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry, I can prove it. I’ve got the typewriter that she used to write that story, ‘There Is Only Love,’ when she got me to make that claim against Ellen Sturdevant. And I know how she planted it in a bureau drawer in Ellen Sturdevant’s house. And that’s all I’m going to tell you. And if you’re in it with her you’re going to regret it.” She stood up, bumping me. “You get out of my way.” Saul and I stayed put

Wolfe’s tone sharpened. “I’m not in it with her, Miss Porter. On the contrary, I’m in it with you, up to a point. I ask one question, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t answer it. Did you write an account of your association with Miss Wynn, put it in an envelope, and entrust the envelope to someone with instructions that it was to be opened if and when you died?”

She stared. She sat down. “How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. I surmised it It was the simplest and best way to account for your remaining alive and not in trepidation. Where is it? You might as well tell me, now that its contents are no longer a secret You have just revealed them, their essence. Where is it?”

“A woman named Garvin has it. Mrs. Ruth Garvin.”

“Very well.” Wolfe leaned back and took a breath. “It would have made things easier for both of us if you had been candid with me last evening. It would have saved me the trouble of all this hocus-pocus to force you to speak up. Miss Wynn did not put a manuscript in your house or a knife in your car. Mr. Panzer did not go there last evening. He spent the day composing and typing the kind of story he described because I thought you might demand to see it He also bought the kind of knife he described.”

Alice Porter was staring again. Then that was all lies. “Then you were in it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “If by ‘in it’ you mean a conspiracy with Miss Wynn to make you pay for her crimes, no. If you mean a trap to force the truth out of you, yes. As for Mr. Gather and Miss Corbett and Mr. Durkin, they told no lies; they merely permitted you to infer that the photographs they showed to various people were of you, but they weren’t They were photographs of Amy Wynn — and by the way, we can now hear from Miss Bonner. You needn’t leave your chair, Miss Bonner. Report briefly.”

Dol Bonner cleared her throat. “I showed a photograph of Amy Wynn to the woman who runs Collander House on West Eighty-second Street, Mrs. Ruth Garvin. She said that Amy Wynn lived there for three months in the winter of nineteen fifty-four and fifty-five, and that Alice Porter also lived there at that time. Is that enough?”

“For the present, yes.” Wolfe’s eyes moved to take in his client, the committee. “That, I think, should suffice. I have established a link between Miss Wynn and each of her four accomplices. You have heard Miss Porter. If you wish, I can proceed to collect ample evidence to persuade a jury to convict Miss Wynn of her swindles, but it would be a waste of your money and my time, since she will go to trial not for extortion, but for murder, and that is not your concern. The police and the District Attorney will attend to that. As for—”

Reuben Imhof suddenly exploded, “I can’t believe it!” he cried. “By God, I can’t believe it!” He appealed to Amy Wynn. “For God’s sake, Amy! Say something! Don’t just sit there! Say something!”

I was back in my chair, and by stretching an arm I could have touched her. She hadn’t moved a muscle since Wolfe had asked Alice Porter about the envelope. Her hands were pressed flat against her breasts, as if to hold them up, and her shoulders were pulled back, far back. Down her right cheek, from just below the eye almost to her jaw, were two red streaks where Alice Porter’s nails had scraped. She paid no attention to Imhof and probably she didn’t hear him. Her eyes were fixed on Wolfe. Her lips moved but there was no sound. Someone muttered something. Mortimer Oshin took his empty glass from the stand, went to the table at the far wall, poured a triple portion of brandy, took a swallow, and came back.

Amy Wynn spoke to Wolfe, her voice so low that it was just audible. “You knew that first day,” she said. “The first time we came. Didn’t you?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No, madam. I had no inkling. I am not clairvoyant.”

“When did you know?” She might have been in a trance.

“Last evening. Alice Porter gave me the hint, unwittingly. When I showed her that her position was untenable and told her that I would advise you to prosecute, she was not concerned, she said you wouldn’t dare, but when I added that I would also advise Mr. Imhof to prosecute she took alarm. That was highly suggestive. Upon consideration I sent her home, and I did something I might have done much sooner if there had been the faintest reason to suspect you. I read your book, Knock at My Door , or enough of it to conclude that you had written the stories on which the first three claims had been based. That was manifest from the characteristics of your style.”

Her head moved, slowly, from side to side. “No,” she said. “You knew before that. You knew the third time we were here. You said it was possible it was one of us.”

“That was only talk. At that point anything was possible.”

“I was sure you knew,” she insisted. “I was sure you had read my book. That was what I’d been afraid of since the second time we came, when you told us about comparing the stories. That was when I realized how stupid I had been not to write them in a different style, but you see I didn’t really know I had a style. I thought only good writers had a style. But I was stupid. That was my big mistake. Wasn’t it?”